gfid:I wonder if it's that simple. Can you temporarily re-flag a ship to fly under another country's flag without stepping on other maritime laws? I don't think it's the actual physical flag they're talking about.

Imagine if ship's could just literally make it a "flag of convenience." If the Captain wants special treatment when docking in the UK, he simply hoists their flag up. When the ship returns to US waters, raise the US flag. Somehow, I don't think that would conform to maritime law, but I'm certainly not an expert.

PunGent:way south: I'm fairly certain the author is confused about the flag thing, but just in a case they aren't...Most times when things get held up over little known outdated laws, its not really about the law. It's about someone forgetting to grease the appropriate palm or someone trying to pull a political favor.

I'm sure there's corruption in the shipping/hauling industries, but this isn't exactly a "little known outdated law"; this is more like manslaughter or something; EVERYONE in maritime shipping knows this one, and not just Americans.

NJ state officials, however? Yeah, they could be that stupid.

Well, not "everyone" knew.Otherwise they wouldn't have shipped the stuff on an improperly flagged vessel.

/But it should've taken thirty seconds to explain this and get a waiver./Not like there's a national emergency or anything about a snowpocalipse that's been on the news.

Here just last week and two weeks before that the south was being ridiculed for their inability to cope with winter weather which had a lot to do with lack of equipment and supplies. I have kind of a hard time getting my violin all tuned up for New Jersey.

Also, to you partisan douchebags, a 100 year old law has nothing to do with current politics. Either there are good reasons for keeping the law or it should be repealed, but if it's law then it's law. Whoever was coordinating this shipment farked up by trying to have it delivered by a vessel that couldn't legally do it.

UNC_Samurai:There was a time when the American merchant marine was second to none. Even at the height of Pax Britannica at the end of the 19th century, the world's shipping was just as robust under the Stars and Stripes as the Union Jack. But things changed in the late 20th century. American merchant shipping declined significantly in the 1970s and 1980s, at the same time as the rest of American manufacturing started to disappear.

The problem with this narrative is that US manufacturing never declined. That's a myth, caused by two factors. First, we became far more efficient post WW2, so less jobs were needed to produce the same value of goods. Second, we had massive growth in other sectors, so if you look at manufacturing as a % of GDP it appears to shrink, but that's only because it wasn't growing as fast. If you look at manufacturing in real dollars you can see that the sector has grown at a steady rate over the last century.

Measured in dollars, we produce more than any other country in the world, except for China which recently passed us. However, to produce the same amount of goods that we do, China uses over 100 million laborers, meaning our factories are over 8x as efficient. As labor costs equalize, they will be faced with a) modernizing their plants and b) finding jobs for 90 million people, so it isn't all roses over there.

Point being, US has been and remains a powerful force in manufacturing.

I knew we had a law like this but hadn't read it before, and I'm still not clear (sorry, not very clueful on the intricacies of law, much less shipping law)Okay, only domestic ships can move between domestic ports.

So, could this have been averted had the ship gone to an international port? I'm assuming the same sort of delays would be in order given customs and whatnot.

SomeAmerican:Point being, US has been and remains a powerful force in manufacturing.

You're correct that the U.S. remains a powerful force in manufacturing. But what is hidden in those numbers is that a lot of the vertical integration of the supply chain has been lost. For example, something that contains cast iron parts may be assembled in this country and the value of the assembly added to our GDP but a lot of the raw castings come from China, India, or even Australia because a lot of the foundries in this country are no longer operating.

One company I know makes lots of tools. It is their corporate policy to use only U.S. steel. So their steel vendor buys, for example, a raw steel coil from Brazil, slits it into smaller coils and it is magically transformed into U.S. steel.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but U.S. manufacturing, while still preeminent in terms of productivity and quality, is supplied by a lot of foreign manufacturing that in years past it would never have relied on. In WW II, when we basically armed the world against the Axis, nearly all of the production was U.S. and Canada based. (we sometimes forget how helpful Canada was in the war effort).

way south:PunGent: way south: I'm fairly certain the author is confused about the flag thing, but just in a case they aren't...Most times when things get held up over little known outdated laws, its not really about the law. It's about someone forgetting to grease the appropriate palm or someone trying to pull a political favor.

I'm sure there's corruption in the shipping/hauling industries, but this isn't exactly a "little known outdated law"; this is more like manslaughter or something; EVERYONE in maritime shipping knows this one, and not just Americans.

NJ state officials, however? Yeah, they could be that stupid.

Well, not "everyone" knew.Otherwise they wouldn't have shipped the stuff on an improperly flagged vessel.

/But it should've taken thirty seconds to explain this and get a waiver./Not like there's a national emergency or anything about a snowpocalipse that's been on the news.

I dunno about NJ, but the snowfall here in Mass. isn't much above historic annual levels, if at all.

Piss-poor state planning isn't really an 'emergency' in my book, despite hysterical media coverage of what I call "weather."

KeatingFive:Salt. We're talking SALT here. SALT. Not emergency food, or medical supplies, or any of that. Just salt.

/"Emergency supplies". Good grief.

I'll cut you a break, Florida. Maybe you've never been in a blizzard.They just had a big one, roads are closed all over the state. It's impractical, if not impossible, to plow all the roads 24/7, even if they had enough trucks. The salt is the best way to keep the snow melting off the streets as it falls. With no salt down, the streets get covered, becoming dangerous at best, impassable at worst. So not only do you have the economic harm of people not being able to get to work, people being hurt in accidents, but your precious food and medical supplies can't be delivered either.So yes, emergency supplies.

Four hundred hopper cars at 100 tons each. Break it into two or three separate trains, send them to different parts of the state (which they were probably going to do at the Jersey docks anyway).

Um... seems like they'd have to dock the ship somewhere before they could do that.

Or does your plan include building a railroad out to the ship, since it can't dock at a US dock? Or sailing the ship to a foreign dock and shipping by rail from there? All before the next storm comes in on Tuesday?

This is not the first time it has snowed in NJ. This is not the first time the roads have iced over. This is simply poor planning on NJ's side, nothing more, nothing less. One day Common Sense will return to the US, however some of us will not be here to see it.

LZeitgeist:cirby: If it's needed that much, offload and ship by railroad.

Four hundred hopper cars at 100 tons each. Break it into two or three separate trains, send them to different parts of the state (which they were probably going to do at the Jersey docks anyway).

[boourns.dynu.net image 318x200]

Um... seems like they'd have to dock the ship somewhere before they could do that.

Or does your plan include building a railroad out to the ship, since it can't dock at a US dock? Or sailing the ship to a foreign dock and shipping by rail from there? All before the next storm comes in on Tuesday?

Didn't read the story, huh? The ship IS docked at a US port....up in Maine. If the ship had sailed directly for Port Newark, there would be no problem. The problem is that the ship stopped at a port up in Maine first. Now that salt has to be unloaded in Maine and placed on US flagged ships or rail cars to get it down to Jersey.

Oh, and Drudge is a blaming this law on Obama. Apparently Barry got into his time machine again and went back to 1920 so he could fark with Christie.

State Department of Transportation Spokesman Joe Dee said Monday the department has applied for a waiver from the federal government but it appears unlikely it will be granted, We were pursuing a waiver, but we've been advised we wouldn't get one," Dee said. " It seems unlikely we will get it."

"I've got a pen and I've got a phone -- and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward,"

gfid:mamoru: Fubini: mamoru: So... if they really can't/won't break this law, can't someone simply run a flag out to the ship real quick and solve the problem? Or are conditions too bad for other boats and/or helicopters to do so?

The writer has almost certainly confused flying a physical flag with the notion of a ship's flag state- the country under which a ship is registered, licensed, and regulated.

This is more likely a regulatory dispute over the ship or it's cargo not being up to US standards.

Ah... that makes so much more sense. I'm not really clued-in to maritime laws.

But, you gotta admit it would be a much more Fark-worthy story if the whole situation could be resolved by someone simply dropping an American flag off on the boat. ;)

I wonder if it's that simple. Can you temporarily re-flag a ship to fly under another country's flag without stepping on other maritime laws? I don't think it's the actual physical flag they're talking about.

Imagine if ship's could just literally make it a "flag of convenience." If the Captain wants special treatment when docking in the UK, he simply hoists their flag up. When the ship returns to US waters, raise the US flag. Somehow, I don't think that would conform to maritime law, but I'm certainly not an expert.

Just give them the goddammed waiver.

U.S.-flagged ships have TONS of awesome labor laws they have to abide by. Being a U.S. merchant marine sailor, working on U.S.-flagged ships, you make a ton of money. The same is true in Europe and Japan. Because of this, first-world shipping companies register their ships in bogus flag-of-convenience countries like Panama and Liberia, so they can pay Filipino and Bangladeshi crews one-tenth of what they would have to pay German or American crews, and where there is basically zero regulation. So, no, you can't just change your registration on the fly; you'd be in violation of about a million safety and labor regulations if you did.

/If it were up to me, U.S. shipping companies would have to physically relocate to Panama or Liberia if they wanted to use those flags, and pay vicious excise taxes. The only reason the U.S. merchant fleet isn't the size it was before WWII is corporate greed and government complacency.

Road Rash:So you would think that a state on the east coast, with several major international ports, would know enough to make sure the salt would be put on a ship that could make the delivery.

TFA does not say who is supplying the salt, but the state is probably purchasing it from a company and not another state. Maine probably doesn't restrict where its exports go to. TFA doesn't indicate who made the shipping arrangements -- although such an error implies government-quality work.

It's new jersey.I'm sure that everything at the docks is 100% compliant and up to code.

*Rolls eyes)

Considering it's the biggest port on the East Coast, I'd say it is.

/unions don't like bad conditions for their members

Zeb Hesselgresser:State Department of Transportation Spokesman Joe Dee said Monday the department has applied for a waiver from the federal government but it appears unlikely it will be granted, We were pursuing a waiver, but we've been advised we wouldn't get one," Dee said. " It seems unlikely we will get it."

"I've got a pen and I've got a phone -- and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward,"

Fissile:LZeitgeist: cirby: If it's needed that much, offload and ship by railroad.

Four hundred hopper cars at 100 tons each. Break it into two or three separate trains, send them to different parts of the state (which they were probably going to do at the Jersey docks anyway).

[boourns.dynu.net image 318x200]

Um... seems like they'd have to dock the ship somewhere before they could do that.

Or does your plan include building a railroad out to the ship, since it can't dock at a US dock? Or sailing the ship to a foreign dock and shipping by rail from there? All before the next storm comes in on Tuesday?

Didn't read the story, huh? The ship IS docked at a US port....up in Maine. If the ship had sailed directly for Port Newark, there would be no problem. The problem is that the ship stopped at a port up in Maine first. Now that salt has to be unloaded in Maine and placed on US flagged ships or rail cars to get it down to Jersey.

Oh, and Drudge is a blaming this law on Obama. Apparently Barry got into his time machine again and went back to 1920 so he could fark with Christie.

Yes, I did read the story, but admittedly I missed that it was already in Maine. Consider crow being eaten.

This begs the question - why the Hell would they load it on a foreign ship in Maine to ship to another US state?